Plague Ship

figure he once had. He was having a hard time stretching the suit over his paunch.

He didn’t normally accompany a team on a shore excursion; however, he was the best marine engineer in the Corporation, and everyone agreed his expertise could come in handy.

“Come on, old boy,” Juan said with a grin, and patted Max’s belly. “I don’t recall you having this much trouble a few years ago.”

“It’s not the years,” he moaned, “it’s the pastries.” Cabrillo sat on a bench and, unlike the others, started to put a dry suit on over his clothes. “Linda, have you done your prelaunch checks?”

“We’re good to go.”

“And the cradle?”

“It’s secure,” Max answered for her with possessive pride. He’d designed it, and had overseen its fabrication in the Oregon’s machine shop.

Juan took a communications headset from an attending engineer and called up the Op Center. “Hali, it’s the Chairman. How’s it look out there?”

“Radar shows the normal procession of tankers heading in and out of the Gulf. There’s a containership that pulled into Bandar Abbas’s main dock about two hours ago, plus a handful of feluccas and dhows.”

“Nothing from the naval base?”

“They’re quiet. I’ve scanned all frequencies, and, other than normal blather between ships at sea, there’s not much going on.”

“I hope you’re honing your language skills.” It was a joke between the two. Hali Kasim was the son of Lebanese parents but couldn’t speak a word of Lebanese or Arabic, one of four languages in which Cabrillo was fluent.

“Sorry, boss, I’m letting the translating algorithms of the computer do the work for me.”

“Eric, Murph, you guys set to go?”

When Cabrillo was sending a team ashore, there were no better officers to have manning the ship’s navigation and weapons systems than Stone and Murphy.

“Yes, sir,” the two said in unison. Murph added, “We are locked and loaded and ready to be goaded.” Juan groaned. Murph’s newest hobby was slam poetry, and, despite the crew’s repeated assertions to the contrary, he thought he was a master of the edgy street genre. “Stand by for a comm check once we’re secured in the Nomad.”

“Roger that,” Hali replied.

Linc and Eddie gathered up the waterproof bags containing their weapons and gear and climbed atop the mini-sub. They vanished into the hull through the small hatch. Max and Cabrillo followed them up, Juan giving the thick steel hull a superstitious slap before descending into the submersible. The ride to shore would take an hour, so they took their seats along the mini’s flanks rather than cram half the team into the two-man dive chamber. All four of them would don their scuba equipment during the trip in.

Linda Ross wiggled her way past Juan and Max and took her place in the pilot’s seat, a low-slung chair surrounded by banks of switches, dials, and computer monitors, their glow giving her face an eerie green cast.

“How do you read me, Oregon?” she asked after settling her own headset over her tousled hair.

“Five by five.” Their communications system used 132-bit encryption and cycled through frequencies every tenth of a second, so the chance of intercept and decryption was zero.

The men in the back of the submersible also checked in. The dive helmets they were to wear had integrated ultrasonic transceivers to allow easy communications among themselves, the Nomad, and the Oregon.

“Okay, you can open her up,” Linda ordered.

The lights in the moon pool were dimmed, so as not to show underwater, as the keel doors slowly hinged open. The mechanism that lowered the submersible was engaged. The mini-sub lurched suddenly and then began its stately descent. The warm Gulf water soon lapped against the portholes, before the vessel sank to its neutral buoyancy point. The clamps were disengaged, and the Nomad bobbed free.

Linda activated the ballast pumps, slowly drawing water into the tanks, and gently eased the sub out through the bottom of the Oregon ’s hull. Though she had done it dozens of times, her motions were careful and deliberate. She watched the depth gauge and the laser range finder mounted on the top of the submersible, to ensure they had cleared the keel.

“Nomad is free,” she said, when they were twenty feet below the hull.

“Closing the doors. Oregon over and out.”

Linda descended another forty feet, until the seafloor was just a yard or two below the mini, and set her course for the Bandar Abbas naval base. She kept her speed to just above a crawl so the sound of the propellers churning the water wouldn’t alert any attentive sonar operators in the area, although with the amount of traffic in the Strait of Hormuz it would be next to impossible to single out the whisper-quiet Nomad amid the acoustical clutter.

They were at risk of visual detection because the waters were so shallow, forcing her to leave off the external lights. She would have to rely on the LIDAR system, or Light Detection and Ranging system, which used a series of reflected lasers to map out the terrain immediately in front of the sub. She would get them to the base by following the three-dimensional computer representation of their surroundings.

The LIDAR could detect objects as small as a soda can.

“This is your pilot, up here in the cockpit,” she called over her shoulder. “We will be cruising at an altitude of negative forty-eight feet at a speed of three knots. Our estimated arrival time at our destination is approximately sixty-two minutes. At this time, you may use approved electronics, and don’t forget to ask an attendant about our frequent-flier program.”

“Hey, Pilot, my peanuts are stale,” Linc called up to her.

“Yeah, and I want a blanket and a pillow,” Eddie added.

Max chimed in, “While you’re at it, a double Scotch would hit the spot.” Listening to the banter over the next half hour, one would have never known they were about to infiltrate Iran’s most heavily secured naval facility. It wasn’t that they weren’t aware of the risks. It was just that they were too professional to let that wear on their nerves.

But all that dried up with thirty minutes to go. The shore team started putting on their scuba gear, checking and rechecking each other’s equipment as they went. When they were suited up, Juan and Linc slid their way into the phone booth-sized air lock. There was a hatch in the ceiling of the claustrophobic chamber that could be opened from the cockpit or from inside the air lock, but only when the pressure on each side of the armored door was equalized. To save time, Juan hit the controls that allowed seawater to slowly fill the chamber. The water was blood warm as it climbed up their bodies, pressing in on Juan’s dry suit. Juan had to smooth out the wrinkles so the suit wouldn’t chafe. Both men had to work their jaws to ease the pressure on their inner ears.

When the level was just below their necks, Cabrillo hit the button again. There was no need to put on their dive helmets until the last moment.

“How are you doing back there?” Linda’s voice was tinny and distant through the helmet.

“Why is it I always get stuck in this thing with the biggest member of the crew,” Juan cried theatrically.

“’Cause Max’s belly’s too big to fit in there with Linc, and Eddie would be squashed like a bug,” Ross said.

“Hey, man, just be thankful I don’t take a deep breath,” Linc joked in his deep baritone.

“Chairman, the LIDAR is picking up the submarine pen’s doors. We’re about fifty yards away.”

“Okay, Linda. Put us on the bottom to the right of the dry dock’s entrance.”

“Roger.”

A moment later, the Nomad shuddered slightly as Linda settled it onto the sandy seafloor. “Powering down all nonessential equipment. Whenever you’re ready.”

“What do you say, big man?” Cabrillo asked Lincoln.

“Let’s do it.”

Juan put on his helmet, making sure the locking rings to keep the suit watertight were secure and that he was getting sufficient air from the tanks. Cabrillo waited until Linc gave him the dive signal for “OK” before opening the flood valve again. The water quickly rose to the air lock’s ceiling. He doused the lights and hit another toggle to